


Hello, World.

by Miss_Understood



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Angst, Argents capture everyone, Blood and Gore, Captivity, Creature Everyone, Creature Stiles, Eventual Happy Ending, For Science!, Full Shift Werewolves, Interspecies Relationship(s), Kidnapping, M/M, Mention of Jackson, Mild Gore, Minor Character Death, Mythical Beings & Creatures, Read at own risk seriously, So much violence, Triggers, Violence, mention of other characters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-03
Updated: 2016-06-05
Packaged: 2018-02-15 15:13:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 18,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2233698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miss_Understood/pseuds/Miss_Understood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>"Stiles hasn't seen the sun in seventeen years."</em>
</p><p> </p><p>In which Derek stumbles gracelessly into a world of creatures, lost hope, and captivity.</p><p>------------ABANDONED------------</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I Was Here

**Author's Note:**

> Title from a Lady Antebellum song of the same name.  
> This is just something I've been thinking of since forever, actually, and was getting tired of just daydreaming about it.
> 
>  **Warning:** This story contains general themes of slavery, captivity, depression, and dehumanization. Mention of suicide/homicide and self-hate in later chapters. Just disturbing in general, probably not for the weak of stomach.  
>  For those of you like me that have a love/hate relationship with angst and misery and a happy ending, this is the shit for you.  
> Enjoy?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Welcome to the show, I suppose.

                                                           

 

_“Hope is an instinct only the reasoning human mind can kill. An animal never knows despair.”_

                                                                                                                           -Graham Greene ( _The Power and the Glory_ , 1940)

 

Laura was brought in on a Sunday.

It was nothing they hadn’t seen already, the remaining six of them in _Anthro_ , and it was certainly not the worst.

She screamed and thrashed, despite the wolfsbane ropes that strung up her limbs like jewelry. Her claws caught one of the men in his face, blood red stripes rising from under his skin and leaking down his neck. Her eyes burned like fire, red and angry, but even Stiles could see that they were damp with unshed tears. As her body was hauled through the room, Laura’s movements began to slow ever so lethargically, turning violence into submission in the most inhumane way one could.

They did this with purpose, Stiles knows. They make sure to drag all the newcomers through the entire building – in front of everyone – so that they might remember their place. From the moment someone is brought inside, they’re strung up like figurative marionettes and made to dance in front of the crowd, just in case one of them was beginning to feel the itch of flight.

Laura was their puppet that evening, now that it was after hours and the Menagerie was closed until the morning following. The people will file in with such incredible excitement, will tap on the glass even though the signs say not to, will whine when the creatures don’t do much else but sit somewhere in sight. It’s very repetitive, after all, when, instead of being the exhibitors, you’re the exhibit, and people are sticking their big ugly faces up against the glass.

The men threw Laura into the recently emptied werewolves’ enclosure just across from Stiles’, shutting the door with a sort of violent closure. It was a statement to everyone, cementing her status as an animal to the humans that come by every day and feed scraps. Dehumanizing was a fitting word.

Stiles found himself slowly creeping forward in his own space, tentatively touching his side of the glass with quiet fingertips. He peeked big, brown doe eyes over the room to see Laura’s limp body still strewn carelessly on the dirt flooring. She was awake, but not in control of her own form, and that was the worst kind of torture. Remnants of tears dripped down her cheeks, but no more fell.

Laura’s eyes moved tiredly to meet his, and he couldn’t do much else but look. Smiling wouldn’t have made sense here, not at any time of day, so he just frowned quietly and receded.

There wasn’t much else to do besides leave her to herself while the wolfsbane ran its course through her veins, a silent burn under the skin that felt like the end but wasn’t so kind. It was a private moment of pain that everyone deserved.

Stiles glanced sideways at Scott, his direct left. Scott sat with his back to his glass, subdued. Stiles knew better than to say anything; Scott was beating himself up inside for not being able to save the werewolf they’d just lost, and for not being able to save the one they’d just gained. He was noble like that, in all the ways Stiles couldn’t be.

The feeling that resurfaced on the arrival days, on Stiles’ part, was what made him feel so guilty. While the others could honestly express their upset at yet another one of them being put into figurative hell, Stiles couldn’t help but feel that same sense of relief he felt back when it was just him who was here.

He felt the relief that maybe he won’t be so alone anymore.

 And it was hard not to feel guilty.

Because, in a few hours, they would learn that her name is Laura, that she’s twenty-seven, and that she had just lost her entire family in a fire that engulfed her entire house.

And, in a few hours, she would learn that they open at 8:00am sharp.

✽ ✾ ✿ ❀ ❁ ❃ ❋

Laura disappeared on a Sunday, along with the rest of Derek’s family.

He grew up that day, in a way that he’d been unable to for so long. It was only sad that it was his family dying that prompted the revelation.

However, while Derek knew his family had all been killed in the fire, he also knew that Laura was not with them in their demise. Not only did he not find a remnant of her, but also he managed to catch a scent of her – distressed – with a dozen others, unrecognizable.

Several months have passed since that day, and Derek continues to follow every lead imaginable.

It’s only when he bravely steps into town that he finally gets somewhere.

Going into hiding hadn’t done him much good, look at him now, and so long that he kept himself in check he’d be invisible as a werewolf.

Derek manages casual as he makes his way down the sidewalk, giving pleasant nods to passerbys and smiling when necessary. It doesn’t take much longer than that before a bright red flyer is practically thrust into his hands by a small paperboy, who keeps shouting about “Free entry one day only!”

Upon looking down at the headlines, Derek nearly swallows his tongue.

Everyone knows about the Argent Menagerie, after all, it’s one of the hottest tourist places on the west coast. Derek doesn’t know how he could have possibly forgotten.

The Argent Menagerie was founded in 1910, as a traveling exotic animal expo during the first and second World Wars. They were less of a circus and more of a zoo, exposing the generally depressed public a fresh sign of life, giving them something to do with the spare time they’d inherited from unemployment and homelessness. It gave the people something to do, something to be fascinated and amazed by while their families and friends and neighbors went off to war.

At this time in its history, it wasn’t particularly looked down upon. But with nearly five decades of time comes new interests, and by the year 1960, people were much less enamored with the elephants and tigers and camels.

The Menagerie was forced to set its roots in southern California, after a dramatic loss in funds while visiting there. With no money to stay open or even to leave the state, the Argent family was forced to change tactics.

The discovery of a new form of life in European countries was what they were waiting for.

Not only was the general public amazed by these creatures, they were afraid of them.

Humanoid in many ways, with an added idea of some sort of super power, they were seen as menaces to society- something to be avoided.

Or caught.

That was the start of the Argent’s family history of hunting, starting with Gerard Argent, the head of the Menagerie in 1960, who took the initiative to sell every one of his exotic animals to the nearby San Diego zoo and use the money to import 12 of these newly discovered humanoid creatures- the ones of myths.

Of the twelve, the imports included two faeries from Spain, three centaurs from France, a small pack of five Transylvanian werewolves, and a young pair of nymphs from Poland.

They were hardly enough to even fill half the animal cages, but the advertising of new species on display was enough to jumpstart the business. More than that, it brought in more money than the Argent Menagerie had in its last five years.

This was the start of what these creatures would call the First War of Captivity.

And those that didn’t go into hiding were caught and put behind glass for the rest of their lives, however long that may be.

It’s as sickening as it is nerve-wracking. The distinguishable feeling of nausea sweeps hard at Derek’s insides, yanking and pulling at intestines. He steps backwards into the side of a building, body rigid as he slides himself tentatively to the ground, hand buried in his hair and pulled taut. Swiping his hand down his face, he finds horror mixing with preconceived despair because _how could anyone survive that?_ How on this earth could a person live behind glass, in the absence of hope, and have any drive to live on.

Derek had heard countless tales of suicide, of murder, originating from the Menagerie. This kind of news ricochets through the supernatural grapevine, knocking the wind out of people and bringing them to their knees in emotional horror.

At this moment, it doesn’t matter if his life is on the line. He’s throwing it all away as he walks, determinedly, towards the train station, shedding any sense of self-preservation.

It’s a death sentence, walking into the Argent Menagerie willingly, but love trumps all. So they say.

 

 

The building itself is as magnificent as the rumors say, horrifying to his kind, but magnificent.

It’s built up two stories from foundation, characterized by classy aging brick walls and blacked-out windows held in clearly ancient frames, a large arch bowing upward to the sky from the structure’s roof reading simply _Argent Menagerie_ in tasteful, winding letters.

The general public swarms outside the building like wasps, screaming children and nervous-excited energy swimming in air. It’s a anxiety cocktail for Derek, turning his stomach over and tying intestines in knots. It’s been a very long time since he’s allowed himself to be so imbedded in the human crowds, having tried his best to sink into shadows for Laura’s, and his own, safety in this day and age.

Taking a step towards the looming front doors is bold and brazen, but Derek finds he feels like neither. It rather feels like he’s stepping into a test room unprepared, like the world might trip and fall over on him at any moment. He does it though, because desperation can make a man, or woman, do anything.

As soon as he’s through the double doors the smell hits him, floors him rather. The air reeks of chemicals, of magic and poison and _heartbreak._ Tempted to hold his breath, Derek is compelled to breathe through his nose. He needs to understand this. He needs to feel their pain. He’s spent so long in hiding, feeling as if nothing could be worst, while these creatures- these _people_ sat behind glass.

He wonders if they’ve given up, if they’ve lost hope. Do they even speak anymore, with no one to speak to? Treated like animals in the worst conditions, he can’t imagine he could survive.

The first room begins under a door that reads _Ethos Hall,_ and upon entering Derek can immediately classify this as the hall of non-humanoid creatures. Against his better judgment, he enters the room and watches eyes turn on him, staring straight in silence. It isn’t noticeable to the human exhibitors, who chatter on about the creatures’ beauty, but Derek’s breath leaves him anyway.

In particular he notices a phoenix, unicorn, and griffin notice him, eyes knowing and sharp, even through glass. The werewolf, feeling caged in the most ironic sense, slips through the room before he can attract more attention, and before the guilt can consume his entire heart altogether.

Room after room he feels this eating away at his chest, as he sees the defeated faces of these creatures.

He vaguely registers walking under an arch reading _Anthros Hall,_ feeling sick and drowning in the pain of every creature here. He walks with his head down, holding his breath and narrowly avoiding running into people admiring the exhibits. Derek feels someone trip behind him, giving him a light push forward by extent that he doesn't fight. Stumbling a step forward, he recognizes the wall of glass in front of him for what it is, and can't stop himself from looking up, away from his shoes.

He's struck minutely by the boy's beauty, but more primarily by the pair of gentle amber eyes staring back at him, expression reading confused. From behind the glass, he looks soft and untouchable, almost surreal. The boy's lanky and tall, barely hiding bones under a set of clothes that have about as much color as a brown paper bag. He stares with big doe-like eyes, looking nearly all human with flush pink lips and a snub, turned-up nose. He's beautiful, almost like something out of a dream, with an air of _magic_ wafting about him. Elvish, pointed ears are hidden underneath messy brown hair, distinctly fae. He's not a faerie though, Derek realizes, though the resemblance is obvious.

It's the elegant, twelve-point set of antlers mounted to his head that give distinction. Where a deer's horns are large and intimidating, thickened and gore-ready, this boy's antlers are sharp, yes, and frankly just as deadly. But they're long and winding upwards from his skull, decorated by freely-growing moss and flowering. Small birds and butterflies rest on his tines, completely content as if they were no more than tree branches.    

Derek's heart stammers in his chest, breath catching because this boy, this _creature_ is perhaps the most beautiful thing he's seen since he was a child, even.

For a small moment Derek feels the guilt for looking at the boy like every other curious human, just until he sees the boy's lips stretch in silent speech. The glass is too thick, unbreakable by fists or by sound, and Derek finds himself frowning sadly at the thought, watching the boy try to speak to him, to no avail.

He's about to make known his inability to hear when he notices the boy lift a finger and point at him - no, behind him - as his lips continue to dance to no sound.

Derek watches a moment later, slowly turning to follow the boy's direction.

The feeling could be described as a rush of air after suffocation, or perhaps a heart stopping two, three beats in a row before evening out.

Laura stares back at him, hands thrashing against glass and lips shouting without sound. Her eyes glow ruby red, teary and anxious as Derek pushes through the crowd with such force people begin to shout at him. He doesn't stop until he has hands on the glass, as if perhaps he could press hard enough to reach his sister, whom he hasn't seen in nearly eight months. She looks so ridiculously happy, and yet so sad at the same time, and it breaks his heart to watch.

He feels his eyes dampen just before an arm pulls him forcefully backwards.

Without thinking, his eyes intinctively flash yellow.

Screams are an odd thing, he thinks, because they're mostly just for show. They erupt into the air, people screeching and throwing themselves at the doors and the ground simultaneously, panic rising in the air.

A second security guard joins the one who discovered him, both surprised by the lycanthropy, and trying to radio over their coms while pinning Derek to the glass.

Laura screams silently behind the glass, he knows, but as he feels an odd prick in his wrist, he looks up to see the boy across the room, hands pressed to the glass as well, eyes bleeding concern. He doesn't look frantic or desperate like Laura does, in fact he just looks resigned, sad even, like watching love walk away.

It's minutely comforting as his vision disappears and he can't feel anymore. 

 ✽ ✾ ✿ ❀ ❁ ❃ ❋


	2. One Day You Will

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Derek meets the crew of _Anthros Hall_ and Stiles meets Derek.  
>  (See end notes for a diagram of the setting)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, the response to this was overwhelming, so for that I thank you!  
> Thank you for taking the time to give me comments and feedback, I love each and every one and thrive off of them!  
> I'm guessing you predicted this chapter's plot fairly easily, but hopefully I can throw you for a loop?

_"We do not suffer by accident."_

                                                             -Jane Austen ( _Pride and Prejudice_ , 1813)

 

 

The guy on the other side of Stiles' glass is really pretty.

Like _really pretty_.

Probably the prettiest person he's seen in a long time.

The nymph had been entertaining a small group of small children, smiling at them as they watch him, stare at his antlers, in awe. They point and laugh at Aurelia and Jules, his pair of finches, as they flap happily about his tines. It's familiar and homey, makes him feel like he has a purpose after all. It's comforting, even though he knows it shouldn't be.

So when the man steps up to his glass, closer than anyone ever dares to stand, and finds his eyes, Stiles stares openly back.

The stranger is a werewolf, Stiles knows - he's known too many to miss the distinctive traits - but he can't understand why he's here.

He must know it isn't safe, he can't be that dense.

The nymph continues to stare, confused, as he watches the werewolf watch him with equal curiosity and caution. He's tall, perhaps the same height as Stiles himself, but he can't properly tell because his room is set about three inches off the ground. He's stunning, a trait of werewolves, with dark hair and stubble to match. A sharp jawline and pair of green-brown-blue eyes look on, slightly upwards.

Stiles isn't offended by the attention going to his antlers anymore.

His mother had once told him that it was flattering that anyone found her horns more intriguing than her eyes, since they weren't actually alive like she was. 

He hadn't been sure, not for years even after she'd left, but he's grown into the idea, he supposes.

He can feel the chatter in his tines settle, Aurelia and Jules stilling as they recognize the werewolf just as Stiles had. 

"There's a werewolf here," Stiles tells no one and yet everyone, and he knows the others hear him.

No more than a few moments later does he hear Laura call back, voice nervous.

"I can't see through the crowd, what do they look like?"

Stiles pauses, watching the man with a small tip of his head. The nymph doesn't move, or even look away.

"Tall, maybe six foot? Dark hair, five o'clock shadow, pretty eyes... pretty everything, if I'm being honest," he recites from visual aid, smiling just so.

He averts his eyes past the werewolf, just able to see Laura - restless and pacing - in her own room. She looks over finally, through an open break in the crowd, and her face melts into equal panic and agony. 

She's loud, unbearably so, when she yells " **Derek?!** " across the room, as if he might hear her, as if someone might hear her.

He doesn't - can't - hear, and Stiles watches, feeling sick, as she beats into her side of the glass with angry fists, startling onlookers into backing away.

Stiles looks back to the stranger, to "Derek", and points a guiding finger across the room.

It's not what he expected; the guy _freaks_.

Laura freaks, the security guards freak, but mostly the crowd of people freak.

A frenzy erupts and the mass panic is reflected in screams and sirens that none of them can hear. 

Behind the glass, it's eerily quiet - save for Laura's hysterical sobbing and screaming and thrashing.

 _Anthros_ is empty in seconds, and Stiles watches on as the guards stick "Derek" with a needle to the neck, the werewolf slumping and dropping to the red carpeted floor.

What surprises Stiles is that, while he still feels the guilt as always, he also feels a kind of remorse he's never really felt before today. He's always felt bad when the others came in, but now that he remembers, he's never seen them the moment before they give in to their captors. 

Stiles isn't sure how well the new feeling is conveying when "Derek" doesn't take his eyes off of the him until he's consumed by unconsciousness. 

 

 

 ✽ ✾ ✿ ❀ ❁ ❃ ❋

 

 

The first  sign of consciousness is almost always unpleasant, depending on the amount of time you spend away from reality. The worst part of it all, though, is the uncertainty. Not only do you not remember falling asleep, you don't remember where you are until you force your eyes open, squinting into too-bright lights.

Waking up from anesthesia is debatably worse than waking up from being physically knocked out or fainting. It's the feeling of discomfort, unrest, and an all-over itch you can't scratch that leaves you wishing you could go back under. Your limbs shake uncontrollably, and there's a sudden stun of chill that warm blankets and body heat can't cure. You can't see through blurry vision, and moving is out of the question. While you squirm, uncomfortable in your own skin, you wonder if anything could feel worse than this not-quite pain.

The first sign of consciousness is vulnerability.

Derek realizes too late that it's not a hospital he's waking up in.

There's a distinct lack of lingering death in the air for it to be considered one, in fact the only thing in common is blinding light that won't leave his vision alone. The air smells distinctly of chemicals and magic, heavy-set and unwavering. Undertones tell of nature, but not the real kind. It's hard to explain but human interferement in nature, even the planting of a tree, makes a stark distinction between that which is independently grown and that which isn't.

The whole situation screams confinement, and that has Derek on his feet in a fraction of a moment. When the world goes topsy-turvy he's forced to sit down, head between his knees.

Overwhelming are the heady scents of hurt and desperation, of lost hope. It's all too much, prodding at his head and chest  and insides like needles from all directions. It's a blitz attack.

Somewhere to his immediate left he hears voices.

The words are indistinguishable under all other noise, but the soothing tone of it all draws Derek in and makes it so it's all he can manage to hold on to. 

He only looks up when the voices go silent altogether. 

Laura is bent over his shaking figure, soothing and anxious at the same time. She refuses to let him up and he doesn't yet have the strength for it anyway.

"You stupid idiot," Laura suddenly shouts, smacking him upside the head with enough strength to make it blur his vision for a split second. Not looking remotely sorry, she wraps his reclined body in an awkward hug, burying her face in his chest. It's the definition of mixed signals.

Eventually she lets him sit up at least, and then he remembers. 

The smell of wolfsbane is too potent in the air for him to think the glass isn't heavily laced with it.

The inside of the enclosure isn't particularly large. As if trying to simulate a forest, vines hug the walls and trees poke up from floor to ceiling, overgrowth pouring out from the ground and winding around everything. 

It's not so much a cage as a container. Characterized by three walls and only one panel of glass from ceiling to floor, it's an enclosure. Derek's suddenly reminded of the zoo, infuriated, and clenches his fists so tightly that his blunt human nails draw blood. The whole situation has a fishbowl effect.

Glancing through the glass across the outer room, he can see several identical windows across the room.

The room in which they're all kept is octagonal-shaped, each panel another slab of glass with a creature behind it, save for one- the entrance.

The layout looks much different from here, Derek muses. Outside the glass the place almost looks cozy, but this viewpoint, less so.

The werewolf finds himself lying back down, throwing an arm over his eyes with a sigh, "I'm sorry, Laura," he apologizes, not knowing what for but feeling the necessity. A matching sigh puffs beside him before she's pulling him shakily to his feet.

When Derek opens his eyes he frowns, because she's gotten skinnier since he'd last seen her - not dramatically so, but the point is there. Her eyes, devoid of vibrant green-blue light, are sunken in and the skin underneath dropped just so. Her hair is a step up from unkempt - a very small step - and looks too long for her face, which shows her cheekbones more prominently. He swallows a heavy wave of guilt and sorrow and  _hurt_ , wrapping his arms around too-frail shoulders and taking comfort in the small press of fingers in his back when she reciprocates. 

After several moments of silence, faces buried in eachother's necks as a sort of backwards apology, Laura says "I missed you" in the softest tone Derek's ever heard. As if she feels guilty for even thinking the words.

He just nods to himself, holding on just a little tighter. 

They stay like that, making up for lost time and wallowing in each other's sorrows. 

It's unnaturally quiet, and Laura clears her throat just as Derek thinks to mention it.

"I don't want to overwhelm you or anything, but everyone's been holding their breath for quite a while now-" she tries, interrupted by several sudden gasps for air from varying parts around the room. 

Derek jumps, surprised by the sudden noise, stepping away from Laura and towards the glass panel. The press of his fingers against it is chilled, and Derek can feel the underlying wolfsbane and mountain ash, but it doesn't burn at his skin. He can see several of the other enclosures - a perk of the shape of the room - but the neighboring ones are much less visible. 

Bambi eyes stare at him from across the open floor, smiling just so. 

He almost smiles back, until he remembers.

"Well this is nice and everything, but can we get on with it already?" A voice drawls sarcastically, off to his left side. Laura rolls her eyes at the voice's owner and he cocks his head too look across the room at a head of vibrant red hair. For being underwater, her image is strikingly clear. 

"That's Lydia," Laura introduces, leaning against one of the solid walls.

Lydia's stunning, to say the least. With a flashy red tail and the stereotypical sea-shell bra, she's a walking -swimming- cliche. Derek makes to mention it before a "The only rule is that we don't talk about it" carries across the room. He shuts his mouth just as quick, watching her head bob above the waterline. He's taken aback by a grin of pointed teeth and sharp fins arching over her back and forearms, webbing sewing her fingers together. She hasn't human ears, but fanned fins in their place, and slits of gills running through her neck. 

"Mermaids are significantly less intimidating in the movies, are they not?"

Derek agrees, but only to himself. He doesn't doubt that she could rip into him without much effort. 

He wonders how hard she fought the people who caught her.

"How can I hear her? I thought the glass was sound-proof?" Derek asks, the thought dawning on him as he looks to his sister, who shrugs. 

"I guess the Argents don't care that the ceilings aren't, as long as the guests can't hear us. The glass makes the sound travel," Laura wonders aloud, waving a hand outwards towards the room on the other side. 

A boy across to his right stands on goat's legs, waving, friendly, at him. "Hi, I'm Scott." 

Derek stares until he frowns.

"He doesn't like to be stared at," A man comments from the glass next door to the satyr. He's dark-skinned, broad, and about 6 feet taller than any average human.

"Boyd is half-giant. It's a subject of controversy," Laura explains from the background, and Derek nods his assent to him. 

Erica is the pixie to Derek's direct right whose voice is almost small enough to evade his hearing altogether, and Isaac is the incubus, to his left.

"And I'm Stiles."

Derek turns his attention across the room, watching the boy wave a friendly hand, fingers splayed wide and grin set underneath a pair of strikingly bright eyes.

"Derek," the werewolf introduces, fingers itching at his side to reciprocate a small wave. Stiles laughs quietly, lips tugged sideways with a small quirk of an eyebrow.

"I know," he responds, "Laura's told us all the details, but she conveniently left out the whole supernaturally-hot aspect of it." He gives the aforementioned girl a look and smiles at the one he receives in return. Derek doesn't blush, but it's damn close. 

A slow silence falls, the question hovering in air, waiting for someone to grab it.

Derek clears his throat awkwardly, "So..."

"I'm a nymph," Stiles answers without prompting, striking Derek with curiosity. "The antlers are a family trait-" he tips his head to put them in motion, vines and flowers falling elegantly to the ground. The pair of birds that had been resting in his tines flapped their protest, but didn't make move to leave, settling as soon as Stiles straightened up. They chirp, almost patronizingly, at Stiles's head, prompting a soft laugh from the boy. He lifts a finger to stroke over the small brown finch's head while Derek stares at the flowers and greenery that are instantly blooming back into place.

 The birds startle a second time when the main door slams forcefully into its adjoining wall, and they flutter silently out of sight. Stiles' butterflies pin themselves like jewelry to his bare back, hiding. Derek, before noticing the approaching figure, watches as Scott and Boyd recede a few steps, Lydia's fins fanning out with a hiss as she darts to a dark corner. He's pulled backwards by Laura, who gives him a glare that says  _don't look._

 He looks.

Chris Argent isn't a cruel-looking man. Derek's never before met him, but even his first impression isn't particularly terrible. The man's relatively tall, sharp features that read as pissed as they are tired. He's nothing like his father, at least not in looks, because Derek has had the pleasure of seeing him once before- if in passing.

Approaching Derek's glass with purchase, he frowns and looks the werewolf over, all the while ignoring Laura, stock-still behind him.

"Derek Hale?" An intercom broadcasts from a speaker on the left wall, shrill interference sharp and unpleasant in his ears.

Keeping eye contact, Derek slowly nods. He watches Argent's lips move in silent speech before the words resound inside the glass, a small lag.

"I trust that your sister can tell you how things work around here."

When Derek doesn't respond, he steps away, but doesn't leave.

He's striding over to Stiles' glass when another figure crosses the room. She's small and thin, all sharp cheekbones and perfect brunette curls, and she joins Chris at his side. His daughter, perhaps, waves a small hand at Stiles, who reciprocates with an easy smile. What strikes Derek is the genuineness of it all.

They can't hear Chris' side of the conversation, but Stiles nods and answers respectfully, laughing between words. He's charming.

"Don't say anything," Laura whispers, pulling him back a little, into the darker corners. It's as if she'd known he would.

"Why not? Stiles...he's talking with them like, like they're friends or something!" Derek hisses, hushed. He can feel Isaac and Erica stir on either side of him, listening in; He doesn't care. "I don't understand how on earth he could-"

"No, you don't."

Derek looks up abruptly, meeting Lydia's sharp eyes across the room.

She speaks very quietly, adamant about keeping her voice down to a frequency that could rival Erica's. He stares, anger building under his skin and he can feel his canines lengthen. How could Stiles act like this? Why wasn't he afraid, or upset, or even depressed? It now strikes Derek as odd, how from every enclosure he can feel depression and anxiety leaking from the seams. He doesn't feel that from the one across the room.

He's nauseous, all of a sudden, because Stiles  _isn't protesting._ He doesn't come across as the least bit upset.

It's infuriating, especially when everyone's been here (Laura's been here!) against their will, held hostage for god knows how long.

They're all miserable.

They're all on the edge of breaking, he can feel it.

They've all given up.

And Stiles...

Stiles has the nerve to stand behind glass and  _smile at Chris Argent_ , as if he's hung the damn moon.

When he looks up, eyes burning yellow with rising anger, he finds everyone's attention on him.

The Argents and Stiles continue to talk, unaware.

"You couldn't possibly understand," Lydia accuses, voice dangerously low and patience dwindling. 

"Then tell me!" Derek says too loud.

Scott steps forward to the glass, pressing fingers against the cool transparency and bringing on himself Derek's attention. He doesn't look angry - not like Lydia - but he looks sad. He looks depressed, like  _Stiles should be_. 

But mostly he just looks like remorse.

"You can't blame Stiles for not feeling like we do, Derek," he says softly, emotion thick and heady. 

Derek doesn't want to ask, he's afraid of the answer.

He does.

"...Why not?"

"Because Stiles hasn't seen the sun in seventeen years."

Lydia doesn't look at all sorry for dropping what everyone had been keeping off of tongue, and in fact she stares at Derek with the intensity of no other. She waits, likely for a rude comment, but Derek doesn't have one.

"Scott, how old is Stiles?" Derek manages, tongue feeling too big for his mouth. His fangs had long gone away, ashamed and sorry just as the rest of him.

Scott tips his head sadly, smile light and faint. He looks a little wobbly on his hoofs, eyes too big. 

"Derek, he's seventeen."

He knows then, why Lydia is so fiercely protective, and why Scott looks moments away from falling to his knees.

He knows then, why Boyd refuses to look up and why Erica and Isaac are more than silent on his sides.

He knows then, why Laura takes his hand into both of hers, reassuring without prompt.

Stiles hasn't seen the sun in seventeen years.

In fact, Stiles hasn't seen the sun at all.

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case it wasn't clear in this chapter, this is a crude drawing of what Anthros Hall looks like.  
> Thanks for reading!
> 
> (Note: My next update is reserved for my other story _Roulette_ , so it may be another week or so before an update comes to this story of mine)


	3. If Only

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **GRAPHIC DEPICTIONS OF VIOLENCE/GORE, PROFANITY AND CRUEL LANGUAGE, AND OTHER HORRIBLE THINGS IN THIS CHAPTER**  
> please read at your own discretion, even i had a hard time writing this

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really sorry.

"If home is where the heart is

then my home is where you are,

but it's getting so hard to spend these days without my heart."

\- Relient K (I'm Taking you with Me)

 

 

 ✽ ✾ ✿ ❀ ❁ ❃ ❋

 

 

 

_Stiles hasn't seen the sun in seventeen years._

_In fact, Stiles hasn't seen the sun at all._

 

 

"You're a fucking liar," Derek concedes, an hour later, deciding for himself that any other explanation is just- "That's just, It's so-"

"Inhumane? No shit, wolf boy," Lydia hisses at him through fanged teeth, the fins set in place of ears fanning out in anger. "What'd you think they did to people like us in places like these?" She's emotionally unstable, swimming from furiously left to right, pacing. The dorsal fin across the mermaid's thin back arches up, revealing sharp needle-like webbing much like that between her fingers.

Derek snarls back, experiencing for the first time in a long time, the human instinct of fight or flight. And since flight isn't an option, "It's just not possible, no one could live like that!" Upon hissing at the rest of the room, he pauses. No one but Lydia lashes back at him, melancholy expressions flitting across their faces and bringing their energies to a startling halt. They don't look smug or angry, just sad. It reminds Derek too terribly of pity.

Lydia's nostrils flare with the rest of her fans, but she falls slowly into the same upset as the others as her eyes turn on Stiles, her direct left.

The nymph is fast asleep, in another world, after Chris Argent and daughter had spoken with him for what felt like hours. He's lost to this world, limbs strewn haphazardly across the grassy floor of his enclosure. Flitting delicately about Stiles' chest, a thicket of butterflies land silently there and wave their wings open and shut, leaving the world to catch short glimpses of their colors. Stiles' pair of birds hustle about the room still, picking up loose sticks and greenery from the small trees. They're trying to build a small nest in the tines of Stiles' antlers.

"Stiles has been here his whole life, Derek," Scott speaks up, drawing the werewolf's attention. Laura steps up behind Derek, a comforting hand on his shoulder. He's not sure why he needs it, but it manages to settle his stomach at least, as it had been flipping nonstop as the lot of them had waited for Stiles to fall asleep.

"Have you?" Derek's compelled to ask, but gets his answer with a small shake of the satyr's head.

Scott sits down tentatively on a tree stump, his animal legs tucked underneath him.

"Lydia and I have been here the longest-"

"Seven years, Derek. We've only been here seven years," Lydia interrupts, sinking lower to the bottom of her cerulean blue tank.

Derek thinks _only_ , but says nothing. He runs a hand through the thick of his hair, eyebrows pinched together as he tries to process everything.

Laura takes the respectful silence to sink down to the floor, pulling Derek along with her. The siblings sit, propped against an artificial-smelling tree and not minding as they, along with the others, watch Stiles' birds in the quiet. They chirp happily, with so much energy that it's almost overwhelming. Derek almost smiles at their excitement, struck suddenly by how lovely companions they are to their nymph. He wonders absently if they have names, and if Stiles might trust him enough to tell him.

Laura starts, "I feel like we shouldn't-"

"Shouldn't tell what Stiles might want to for himself?" Erica recants from the werewolves' right, voice close to silent as usual. Her heartbeat is almost invisible, covered by the hummingbird-like flutter of her wings. "Laura, we told you when you first got here."

"I know, It's just..." Derek watches his sister's expression fall, mirror image of the others.

"We all feel guilty about it," Isaac mentions, sitting on the farthest left of his enclosure so that he might be able to see a fraction of the werewolves' glass. "But it's for the best, you know. People just don't understand until you tell them...And Stiles sure isn't going to."

The room rocks slightly as Boyd sits down with the rest of them. He's almost too tall for his enclosure, even though his ceiling is nearly seven feet taller than the others'.

"So tell me," Derek says.

Lydia frowns, silent as she rests on the floor of her tank. She looks down at her webbed-hands, folded reverently in her lap.

Scott nods though, and begins.

 

 

Among the original twelve humanoid creatures of the Argent Menagerie, not many lived longer than a decade. The werewolves from Romania lasted less than two years, deciding for themselves, despite the others' pleading, that they'd rather die than be kept behind glass. Forced to watch the pack tear into each other and themselves all at the same time, the creatures openly sobbed against the glass paneling. The walls of the enclosure were left painted, red with battle-sweat, for hours until someone found them. Carnage smeared the glass in every direction, loose fur and blood and misplaced organs, and as the last wolf was forced to run a pentagon of his own sharp claws across his neck, he let out one last whimper that sounded too much like misery and too little like freedom.

The centaurs were an accident, the Argent's claimed. An afternoon unlike any other had brought another tragedy no more than three years since the suicide-massacre of the werewolf pack. With a claim that the half-equines had made to trample the workers who'd been cleaning their enclosure, the remaining creatures were forced to watch Gerard Argent and company haul them out by their hooves, dragging lifeless bodies across the marble floors. With accelerated hearing, the faeries and nymphs heard the sickly snap of bones being broken and flesh flayed open.

Unbeknownst to the creatures, the centaurs' hooves were hacked off their legs and mounted onto a wall just outside Anthros Hall in insufficient memorial.

No one was surprised when a sobbing skin-walker boy was hauled in the day following, shiny and new.

The Spanish faeries died ("natural causes") soon after giving birth to a young girl called Aurelia with the most brilliantly neon shaded wings;she surpassed the beauty of her parents by miles, and easily brought in twice as many exhibitors than her yellow-winged parents ever had.

The nymphs had far better luck, but were instead plagued by memories of death and carnage and gore that made them sick every night. Originating from Poland, the nymphai were only just ten years old when they were brought over. With no knowledge of English and no understanding of what had happened, the complete strangers had been forced into the most personal relationship a ten year old could manage. One that left them in a constant state of fear.

They lived like that, together, for twenty-five years further, before they were encouraged by the Argents to have a child- no, a successor, they had called it.

Little more than friends, they did as was asked, and even though they had aged twenty-five years since, averaging 35, but then again who really knew, nymphs lifespans were significantly lengthier, give or take fifty years.

Nine months gave them a son, born in captivity.

At five years old he began to grow horns and, in the Argent's eyes, his parents couldn't compare.

Ten years into the nymph's lifespan and his parents were sent away, to death or to another place, no one could tell for sure.

Alone, save for the remaining faerie and skin-walker, until they too left.

 

"But they got out," Derek manages, half-stunted by the tale. His skin feels clammy, unnatural, and physically sickened in a way he's not supposed to feel. "The nymphs, they were sent away alive."

Lydia sighs, glancing from the floor of her tank across the room at Scott, who looks equally as resigned. The mermaid pushes herself up to the surface, head breaking the water, gills sealing shut as she takes a breath of air.

"Sure, they left here, but there are much worse places to be," Lydia explains, eyes fiery with anger in contrast to a defeated expression. "Some of us get sent out when we aren't as shiny and new as we were before..." She speaks as if personally wounded.

"The boy who used to be where you are was sent to London, Jackson was-" 

"We don't need to talk about him Scott, they won't care," Lydia snipes, voice breaking the slightest ounce. She turns away from the room and sinks below the waterline.

Derek is instantly overwhelmed by the hate and angst pouring off of Lydia's small frame, the emotions clouding in his head and distracting him into stumbling backwards, away from Laura, into the back wall. His head hits the panel with enough force to shake him, and the sudden feeling of claustrophobia surfaces. The walls sway in his vision, shrinking his space and making his head pound, pulse loud and deafening in his ears.

The situation had never truly dawned on him, that he'd perhaps never be outside glass ever again, and with the sudden drop of weight, Derek can't hold his own against it. Laura is holding both sides of his face, talking to him head-on and trying for attention and failing because all Derek sees is an end.

An end that can only involve murder, or boxes, or _torture_. 

He's never had a panic attack before, didn't know he could.

But even so, his windpipe feels like it's closing in on itself. His heart won't slow down and he can't see anything but walls and _confinement_.

Derek lunges at the glass, wolfed-out, bouncing off of it and leaving the transparency fully intact. 

It only scares him more.

Laura scrabbles at his arms for purchase, trying to keep him from self-destructing, but Derek keeps going, fangs falling and claws fanning out.

The glass hurts him more than regular glass should, and with each collision fills the room with the smells of magic and wolfsbane. It hurts, desperately, but when the glass gives just so - a small sliver of a crack - that's the end of it.

Derek halts in front of it, throwing fists at the glass and watching, fascinated and in agony, as the cracks spiderweb outward with each hit. 

Somewhere, alarms blare and footsteps are heavy, Laura is screaming at him to stop, and Stiles is undoubtedly awake.

The others stare in disbelief.

 

And the glass, just... breaks.

The panel turns white with the intensity of so many creases, shattering down to the floor in a crash. 

Fresh air rushes into the werewolf enclosure, like a dying breath.

Laboring through heavy breaths, Derek turns to look back at his sister, pinned against the back wall. Laura's hands are fully clawed, nails digging like knives into the back panel. Her eyes are blown wide in fear, not disbelief, and with skin trembling, manages to shake her head unendingly.

"Laura! Come on!" Derek shouts, stumbling over broken glass towards his sister who only presses herself further into the wall, so much so that it creaks under the pressure.

"I-" Laura tries, but Derek lunges forward and grabs her roughly by the wrist, tugging her towards the empty glass frame.

"We have to get out of here, ok?" He says, voice shaky and trembling just as his body. "I can't die here, not like-" _everyone else._

"I can't just leave them!" Laura yells back, trying desperately to get her brother to understand. Her heels dig into the ground, broken glass slicing lines of red into her feet. Derek is gripping her wrist with enough force to break bone, and the werewolf's eyes tear up without her permission. Everything just _hurts._

Derek freezes in his path, watching in horror as Laura fights him with strength reserved for only enemies. He hadn't realized the depth of her relationship with these people, with this place...and he lets go, afraid he'll hurt her in the same way she already has been. For _months._

Laura crumples, hysteric. "They've suffered so much, Derek, and I want to leave right now, I do. So much..." She laughing, desperate, a line of tears coursing down her cheeks. "But these people, my friends... I'm not leaving without them. I can't, you have to understand..." Cementing herself to the ground, nervous hands pulling up grass by the roots, Laura's face pulls taut and stretches into the wolf's. Her body follows suit, and the wolf sinks lower to the ground. She snuffles and whines, tearing Derek apart inside because _how could he have missed it?_

He knows she's been her for months, in a cage, treated like an animal, but he's never really understood.

Not until now, as he watches his sister - who has always had the control to rival their mother - descend frantically into a full-shift.

It's infuriating, and within moments he's raging, breath heavy and thick, chest heaving. The bells and alarms sounding resonate in his head, an instant headache, and the smell of fear and hurt is potent in the air.

It dawns on him that the emotions are from the entire room, and upon turning finds six pairs of eyes on him. 

He only really sees one.

"You."

Stiles jolts, eyes blown wide in the headlights.

Derek moves without falter. Stepping on shards of glass that stick up painfully into his feet, the werewolf approaches the glass panel opposite, as a predator. Stiles recoils a few steps, panic flooding the room as Derek stalks aggressively towards him.

"This is your fault," his tone is uncharacteristically calm, face grinning with cynicism and hate. Derek nears Stiles' wall, just as the deer-headed boy puts a gentle hand on the glass. The nymph's face is desperate, miserable, and begging for solace. It's devoid of only tears, overflowing with silent apology. Derek scoffs at Stiles' weak attempt to calm him down. "Of all the people to last here longest, how on earth did it have to be you?"

The audio barrier to the outside was broken with the first glass panel, and through that open window flows sound. The entire room stills in surprise, each soul hearing Derek's accusatory remarks. 

Stiles doesn't flinch, but his eyes turn glassy. Derek goes on, anger forcing him oblivious to Lydia's screeching in the tank adjacent. Her nails streak on the glass, words swearing at the werewolf with spite. 

"You're the reason of this, you know. Everyone here is miserable because of you. You're the only reason they don't leave, Stiles. You're keeping them here," Derek bites, tone dark and malicious with falsely placed anger. "You gave up, you selfish asshole! I haven't known you a day and yet you've ruined my life... you've ruined all our lives! Why the hell did it have to be you?" Stiles steps back, his pair of birds retreating into the trees. "Out of centaurs and wolves and vampires, out of everyone, a teenage nymph survives...and only because you're half an animal!"

Somewhere else, the security guards are grabbing his arms and dragging him back. Derek fights, words biting out and fangs doing the same, drawing blood from his lips. "You're weak!" He yells, desperate now as he's being restrained, "I'm going to die here and it'll be your damn fault!"

It's all he can say before someone kicks in the back of his knees, forcing him to the ground. He's expecting a prick of a needle, a release, _something._

Nothing comes except the backhand of a rifle's butt on the back of his head.

Searing pain shoots through him, skull snapping out of place, and he gives up the fight to be pulled from Anthros Hall altogether.

Three or four or five guards drag him through the building violently, and Derek has to watch with blurred vision the other beasts and creatures stare at him with hate, and pity.

He vomits, but nothing comes up except bile, and he's drug through that too.

Sick and hurt and upset, Derek's thrown into a room he hadn't seen all those hours ago when he'd walked freely through the Menagerie.

The door slams shut behind him, and hands from all directions pull him upward, strapping his limbs to a wall with sickly cold metal chains.

He's been tortured before, he has, but when a woman with light hair and a menacing red smile picks up a cattle prod from the floor, he knows it will never be as bad as this.

"You're far too daring as you are now, Derek Hale. You don't get it yet, do you?"

The first hit is without a zap, and he thinks _maybe he can survive this._

"You will though."

Electricity burns at his insides like fire.

 

✽ ✾ ✿ ❀ ❁ ❃ ❋

 

The grass dies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next will be Stiles POV and Derek when he returns  
> Hopefully less intense.
> 
> Sorry.  
> Thanks for reading though.
> 
> Also, I felt a list of characters and creatures, respectively, was necessary.
> 
>  **Current Characters**  
>  Stiles - Nymph  
> Derek & Laura - Werewolves  
> Lydia - Mermaid  
> Scott - Satyr  
> Boyd - 1/2 Giant  
> Erica - Faerie  
> Isaac - Incubus
> 
>  **Mentioned Characters**  
>  Jackson - Kanima  
> Claudia/John Stilinski - Nymphs  
> (to be continued)


	4. Wild Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It has come to my attention in recent chapters that people are very adamantly against the concepts and ideas of this story, and I'd personally like to clarify that I agree with them, and am not actually writing this because I enjoy and support any negative themes.  
> I personally believe exposure is incredibly important, especially in obscure topics like these and also because a story is nothing without a moral.  
> I hope that clarifies my stance, and hopefully my inspiration as well.
> 
> Also: I'm experimenting with others' points of view, so you can see the story with their imput as well. In this chapter, you'll see Stiles, Allison, Laura, and Derek again.

"They say before you start a war,

you'd better know what you're fighting for."

\- The Cab ( _Angel with a Shotgun_ )

 

 

 ✽ ✾ ✿ ❀ ❁ ❃ ❋

 

 

There's a saying, about sticks and stones.

That broken bones and bruises should hurt more than words or tone or tongue.

Because name-calling, because verbal abuse isn't _tangible_... how on earth could that hurt more than a broken bone?

And yet, it does.

Bones and skin and muscles heal naturally, without a second thought.

You don't think twenty years into the future about how much that paper cut hurt in the third grade.

Words are needles without substance, sticking skin and vein and staying too long. 

And even when for one second you forget, in blissful ignorance, a needle bites you in the arm and says

_"Hey wait, remember me?"_

All because of one saying, so unbearably false, and yet so worldly publicized. 

"Names will never hurt me."

 

Of course they did.

 

And while Stiles feels like death personified, as if the walls are falling in on him but hes not only underneath he has the priviledge to watch, he can do nothing to stop himself from spilling emotions, like hurt and guilt, onto the floor and suffocating the grass with the force of it all.

After so many years of wishing to hear what goes on on the opposing side of the glass, he realizes that maybe it was best not knowing.

Because Derek isn't like the patrons and exhibitors who pour in like grains of sand to gawk and gaze at things unseen. Derek is like him.

And if Derek feels this way about him, who's to say that the people Stiles has striven to please - to entertain - for close to eighteen years... who's to say that they don't think even worse of him?

So while the grass turns ashen and crisp underfoot, dissolving to dirt, and the trees strip themselves of leaves in moments, Stiles can't do much but watch. There's no off-switch to his emotions once they've surfaced. And the bond to nature that the nymph has cannot be blocked whenever desired.

The grass rises with his energy, the trees celebrate his victories, and the flowers bloom to his laughter.

So now the grass and the trees and the flowers die, in every enclosure, within moments.

 

When Derek leaves, Stiles doesn't notice.

He recognizes that the yelling has stopped, but not much more. To his adjacent right Lydia paces in the water, back and forth, fuming, while Scott on his other side is knocking cautiously on their adjoining wall. Stiles doesn't answer, just sinks to the barren ground at the rear of his room in silence.

"Stiles?" Scott calls from behind the wall, sounding equal parts afraid and upset.

He can't answer, not unless he wants his voice to break mid-speech. Sighing and turning away from the left wall, Stiles brings his knees to his chest. It's times like there he truly misses his parents, his old friends, and people who just understood. He forgets sometimes that he's actually alone, because while Lydia and Scott have been with him for seven years, that's another ten that they haven't been.

He's used to it, growing up with constant change. But that doesn't mean he doesn't wish for something, _anything_ , concrete.

He can count the constants in his life on one hand. On two fingers, actually.

His room and the nature that comes with it, and the Argents.

Chris and Allison are as much of his family as his actual parents, and they've been around longer.

Maybe they didn't carry him to term, or give him his antlers, or teach him Polish, but they've _been there_ for him.

"Stiles?" 

It's not Scott.

" _Alicja_ ," Stiles whimpers, face crumbling.

 

 

✽ ✾ ✿ ❀ ❁ ❃ ❋

 

 

Allison is across the room within moments, startled after hearing the long-forgotten name she'd only heard when Stiles was little and struggling with both his languages. She remembers sitting in front of the glass, five-year-old eyes shining with innocence and glee as she giggled with joy at the boy's fumbled attempts to speak in English to her. _"Alicja, przestać się śmiać!"_ he'd say, picking self-consciously at the velvet on his antlers. She hadn't even been able to reach the intercom button without a step ladder that she'd kept for herself in  one of the storage closets.

This Stiles, upset and lip-quivering, is a remnant of the one she'd known when they were growing up.

She presses one hand to the intercom button and the other gently to the glass, expecting Stiles to do the same - something they'd done since his parents had left. The nymph just shakes his head violently, the start of tears welling up in his too-big eyes. She can literally feel her heart lurch.

"No, Stiles..." She tries, voice saddening. "Stiles, what's wrong?"

Allison's only seen him cry a handful of times, but each time she's struck again by the sheer strength of the nymph. She forgets sometimes that while she was a child and got to talk to Stiles everyday and then go to school, he never left. She'd realized once when she was eight, that Stiles waited for her to come back from school every day she went, unable to do much else. She'd asked her father if maybe she could take him with next time, just for fun, but the answer was a stern no.

She asked all the time, begged and cried sometimes, and gave up the fight when she turned thirteen.

He hasn't left the room since.

"Stiles, it's okay. It's going to be okay, alright?" she pleads, ducking her head to try and grab his attention, but the nymph keeps looking away, silent tears dripping slowly down one cheek. 

_"Przykro mi,"_ Stiles mumbles, kicking at the dead grass under his feet.

"Stiles, what's wrong," Allison asks once more, taking her hand away from the glass and letting them hang loosely at her sides. Her fingers twitch as she watches him hide his face between his knees, plastered against the back wall. She can't offer any kind of counsel from behind glass, can't even hug her longtime friend as he cries alone.

Looking around the room, the others frown and try to get the boys' attention as well, but he won't budge.

It's then that she notices everything else.

The dead trees and grass and the overall greenery of the rooms... well, they're brown. It's never been this bad, never spread outside Stiles' own space. Even the water in Lydia's tank is looking clouded.

 "Dad!" she yells, panicked, reluctant to leave Stiles alone, but when Chris Argent doesn't respond she doesn't have a choice. 

"Stiles, hold on," she tells him, letting her finger fall off the intercom button as she runs from Anthros Hall, through Ethos, to find her father in his office. The man's head is in his hands, wrinkles pressing creases into his forehead.

"Dad," Allison says breathlessly, making her way up to his desk. "Why is Stiles upset?"

Sighing, the man sits back in his chair to look at his daughter, the stress apparent on his face. He looks tired.

"Derek Hale broke the glass."

Stunned, she manages to find a seat in one of the chairs before her eyes widen. 

"Kate's talking to him now, but the panel will have to be replaced entirely. Ally, it's shattered all to hell," he says, distressed, possibly referring to more than just the wall of glass. "I don't know how he did it."

"Everything's dead."

He looks up in shock, "What-"

"Stiles killed all the plants and trees. Dad, he's really upset," Allison says, genuinely miserable as she leans forward in her seat. She's reminded of the boy's lackluster expression and frowns even further. "I've never seen it this bad..."

Chris groans softly to himself in frustration, nearly pulling his hair out as he musses with it. He's silent, in thought, for a long time before he looks up, much more stoic than he'd been the last. "He'll cheer up eventually."

"Dad, he called me _Alicja,_ it's really bad this time. If I could just-"

"Allison-"

"Just a few minutes! You know he wouldn't hurt a fly, and I'm much stronger than him if he would. He just needs a friend, Dad! He's completely alone!" she begs, eyes wet with tears of frustration. They've had this argument dozens of times before, but this time, she thinks, she needs to win more than any time before.

"Stiles has Lydia and Scott, he doesn't need you to get in his space and bother him," Chris concedes, voice rising.

Allison matches him in tone. "Lydia and Scott aren't enough anymore! He's not a wild animal, he's been alone in there for almost eight years!"

"He's-"

"Don't you tell me he's not alone, don't you dare!" She cuts him off, tears flowing freely now. Her father leans back, shocked completely by the raw emotion his daughter had apparently been holding back for so long. 

"He's a person, Dad. A real person, ok...?" she whimpers, crumbling. Chris lets out a small breath, walking around his desk to pull his daughter into a hug. Allison hides her face in his chest, arms gripped tight around his middle. Her father sighs lightly, chin propped on the top of her head as she cries in silence. 

"I know, kiddo. I know."

 

✽ ✾ ✿ ❀ ❁ ❃ ❋

 

 After a few hours, Laura's able to shift back, a fresh set of the brown uniform clothing set just inside the enclosure. She stares at it all - the clothes, the dead grass, the room outside - and wonders when this all became the norm. It doesn't even seem odd in the slightest when she steps into the tight pair of shorts and matching top, feeling like a paper bag. Slowly she moves to stand at the front of her enclosure, and she sees the room outside, without glass, for the first time. There's a line of mountain ash in its place, but It's somehow different without an almost-transparent wall, more open...warmer, even. But even with the gust of fresh air that flows now through the open space, the entirety of the Hall feels dead. 

Everyone is silent, lifeless, and even the trees that used to offer some comfort don't whisper their soothing words. They crack and crumble to meet the ground, forgotten.

Laura's seen Stiles like this before, she has, but his hold on nature had never extended past his own space. 

And while she can be worried for Stiles like the others, she can't help but worry for Derek. 

She knows what they do to wolves here, and Derek's not getting away without a scratch.

Some time later, when she's laid herself down on the crisp grass, hands supporting her face, she hears the smallest of whimpers, in accordance with the shuffle of heavy feet.

A pair of goons struggle to haul Derek's shaking form through the doorway, the black wolf looking small and beaten-down despite his size.

Lydia and Scott turn to look, but while Scott - bless his heart - can manage to look remorseful, Lydia bares sharp teeth and hisses loudly, fins flaring. Stiles doesn't lift his head even a fraction - he's been sitting with his legs to his chest, head between his knees, for hours. 

One of the men breaks the line of ash, showing a sick sort of compassion as they gently set the battered wolf down inside, rather than toss him. 

Laura doesn't know what to do.

Crawling to her brother's side, her hands hover in halted action just above him, unsure. Derek whines, eyes still forced closed, and she finally buries her hands in his fur, trying to sooth him as best she can while he trembles. She sits back on her calves, knees pressed uncomfortably into the dirt as she pulls her brother's head into her lap as quietly as she could. 

His breathing is quick and light, almost barely there, and his heart rate jackrabbits away in his chest.

"Shhhh," Laura whispers, answered with a quiet whimper, while she strokes his dark hair away from the wolf's face. He won't open his eyes, but Laura doesn't expect him to.

"I don't want to say that you deserve it, because no one deserves it, okay?" she tries, wishing she could take emotional pain, because there's nothing physical left to heal, not really. She rubs his ears quietly instead, "But you were really a dick, you know that?"

Derek quiets, hiding his face between her knees.

"Stiles-" he whines at the name "He's not a bad person. But, Derek, he's been alone for a long time... And I know you don't want to hear this now, but you need to."

The wolf's head turns, and a bright eye peeks up at her through dark hair.

"He's never been outside a day in his life, and I think we forget that sometimes," she says, pondering as she looks across the room at the boy. Stiles' head is up, but he hasn't moved otherwise. He picks subconsciously at the base of his antlers, eyes glazed and blank. Aurelia and Jules flap about his tines, trying to cheer the boy up.

"Think about it," Laura thinks aloud, sighing sadly. "He probably hasn't been touched since his parents were sent away-" Derek snuffles into her thigh, clearly disgusted by the idea. "He's seen so many come and go, I wonder how he's been holding himself together so flawlessly."

She smacks Derek upside the head, prompting a startled growl to roll off his tongue.

"Don't growl at me, this is your fault. And you're going to fix it."

Derek huffs, letting the conversation fall into silence. He doesn't move for a long time.

Some ten minutes later he manages to lift his head up, forcing himself to look across the floor.

Laura watches on in quiet, rubbing her brother's ears soothingly as he stares at Stiles, still huddled into himself on the floor.

"You're the only one who can fix it."

 Derek hears her unspoken words -  _fix him -_  and says nothing, falling asleep into Laura's lap and whining in regret.

 

 

✽ ✾ ✿ ❀ ❁ ❃ ❋

 

 

He wakes up to the smell of _excitement awe fear._

Laura's arms, clamping him to the ground, are the only thing keeping him from launching upwards and tearing open still-healing wounds. His body gives and settles back into the itchy, dead grass that tickles the back of his naked torso. He's human again, obviously. But he didn't cloth himself, but with the way Laura's glaring at him, he knows she had to. She holds up a hand, "We're not talking about it."

He doesn't, all the while wondering how long he's been out. He asks Laura as much.

"Probably twelve hours, I don't have a clock to keep time with," she mumbles, voice sullen. She pauses, glancing over her shoulder at him. "We're open."

It should be scary, hearing those words, but Derek can only find the energy to turn and look towards the glass - newly refurbished and twice as thick. 

The faces pressed against the glass startle him, and he wonders if this is how goldfish feel about the whole fishbowl effect. 

There are two women and a small little boy at the front of the small crowd, and while he can't hear them he can just imagine the women's disdainful tones. Their brows are pulled together in tight anger, mouths pulling down at the corners as they side-eye Derek and Laura through the glass. They look disgusted, and Derek can't help but let his skin crawl under the scrutiny. He takes a small moment to look down at the little boy, obviously separate from the two woman - likely a stray, maybe seven years old. His hands are pressed up against the glass, forehead and nose doing the same. He watches with bright blue eyes, calculating and curious, like he's seeing a ghost. He might as well be, Derek realizes.

Laura tries to hold him back when he steps forward, but he shakes her grip off and steps cautiously towards the glass. It's also newly magicked - a ringing sensation in his ears that he can't describe - so he stops a foot or so away. It's still unbelievably close, and Derek is unnerved by the fact that he can't smell them or sense their presence except by means of sight.

The boy catches his attention again, waving a hand at him and speaking to him excitedly. Derek pauses, considering, and points to his own ear with a shake of the head.

The boy frowns, not looking angry, but rather upset. He looks back at the women, who have began speaking to him - faces pointedly serious - but the child only shakes his head and points back at the glass. 

Derek doesn't understand it at all, but he supposes this is a daily occurrence for Laura and the others. 

He doesn't know what to do with a dozen or more pairs of eyes staring at him, expecting him to move or talk or _do something_.

He can't.

Laura's hand settles on his shoulder, a comfort, but Derek can't respond.

It's one thing to know what the others have gone through and experiencing it. 

Glancing over the crowd of people, he can see a fraction of the room. 

Parents and children and teens alike flood in and out of the room like running water, gawking and gazing and grinning at the exhibits.

Across the room, Lydia is darting around her tank with forced energy before coming to a stop at a lower point. She stares into the smaller children's eyes, sharp teeth grinning artificially as she waves a webbed hand at them. The children scream - Derek can tell by their expressions - in glee, charmed, and they wave back with enthusiasm. Scott just smiles and waves at the people, like his charming, dopey self, and pretends to be listening as little children around him spout words in silent speech. 

It's mostly children and parents, but Derek finds a few teenagers - some holding hands, while others' hands are...elsewhere.

Derek snarls at the thought, wondering how people could come here and just _let this happen._

_"_ It's gross, but the Argents can't stop them without the police snooping into their business," Laura comments behind him, "And God knows they won't bring law enforcement here willingly."

Derek's fangs protrude from his mouth, eyes flashing color as he watches these youth - and a few adult men - pleasure themselves in the middle of the crowd. As if this were a prostitution ring, a sight show. It's more than disgusting, and he feels sick when he realizes where most of these people are stationed.

Stiles' face is more open and expressive than Derek's ever seen, eyes bright and warm as kids and adults alike flock to him like sheep. They're in awe of him, watching him fave silently, but mostly watching his antlers. Stiles' finches flit about the tines, chirping and making a fuss as Stiles moves his head so often. The grass and trees and leaves are all still dead, but Derek can see the faintest bit of green returning to them. 

The boy slowly sinks down to sit at eye-level with the smaller kids, and he presses his hands to the glass with a smile, little hands scrambling to meet his on the other side. He makes a show of laughing - silently, Derek realizes - but his smile is beyond charismatic. The parents seem to think so too, letting loose small smiles as Stiles entertains. Derek notices the obvious absence of angry, scowling people, like the two women by Derek. He has the biggest crowd, there's frankly no competition.

Derek can't see Isaac or Erica, but he catches a glance at what he can see of Boyd. 

"Who are they?"

A small crowd of five or six people sit at the foot of Boyd's enclosure, legs folded underneath them as they sit in  absolute silence. They're wearing the same shirt, but Derek can't read it from the distance. He notices flags and banners at their feet, untouched but present all the same.

Laura smiles, and Derek's unreasonably pleased by it. "The protesters. They come by every now and then, always setting up shop by Boyd. I told you, I think, that Boyd's a topic of debate?"

Derek nods.

"Well, he's only half-giant, and those people come here to protest the captivity of all of us, actually." She's still smiling, just faintly, and Derek just knows she hasn't given up yet.

They look like good people. A pair of twins, a delicate girl with Asian features and a glint in her eye, a pale-skinned brunette with a wild grin, and a brown-skinned boy with a warm dimpled smile.

When he looks back to Stiles, he realizes he, too, is smiling. But Stiles is staring right back at him, mouth pulled in a thin line.

Derek's smile falls, but he can't bring his eyes away.

Stiles doesn't look angry, just sad and confused. His cheeks are undoubtedly pink, and after a moment he glances down again, shy in the moment, resigned.

"Stiles," Derek says quietly, knowing the boy hears him as he head twitches just the slightest. 

"Stiles, I need to apologize."

"You don't need to do anything, actually."

Derek stares, surprised, as Stiles turns to look at him. He's much more serious this time, face all hard lines and sharp angles; the soft, open expression is gone. His antlers look pointedly more threatening now, as he tilts them forward as a sort of unconscious shield. Derek swallows what might be left of his pride.

"I do," he admits, adamant. "I made a snap judgement of you, and It wasn't fair of me." Stiles turns away, arms crossed as he stands facing the wall he shares with Lydia. "I'm sorry." holds his breath as he watches the nymph in stunning profile. He's struck suddenly by the artful bow of his lips, a delicate snub to his nose, turned up just so. His eyes are a spark of determination and fight, true windows to the soul.

He hasn't taken the time to really look at the boy since he'd first arrived, outside the glass and blissfully ignorant.

"Sorry doesn't change much, but thank you," Stiles mumbles, stubborn but reasonable, Derek realizes. He's more mature than Derek, and it's incredibly frustrating because he shouldn't be.

He's suddenly aware of the other voices listening, trying not to meet Lydia's sharp gaze. Stiles turns to step away entirely, receding back into the corner of his enclosure.

"Wait!" He calls, stepping forward and shocking the onlookers into jolting back. He doesn't notice them. Stiles stops, glancing up from the ground hesitantly.

"I want you to understand-"

"You don't have to explain yourself, Derek, I get it-" Stiles tries, heartbeat steady.

"I want to," He concedes, and when Stiles doesn't move to say anything else, begins, pretending that there aren't six other people listening in.

A deep breath.

"I know what it's like to lose your parents," Stiles startles, and glares suspiciously at Scott's wall, "I asked them to tell me, don't blame them." The nymph's expression softens just so. "As soon as I lost them, I was empty - you know the feeling - but I had Laura and my Uncle, at least for a while. I don't know- I don't know what I'd have done if they hadn't been there. I've never been alone before," he ponders, making this up as he goes. He's learning even now.

"So you," Stiles looks up at this, "You're uncharted territory. I've never gone through what you have, and even now I hadn't even lasted a day before I cracked."

Stiles lets loose a hint of a sour smile at that, apparently agreeing. Derek smiles, self-deprecating. 

"This is all new to me, so you're going to have to bear with me while I figure it out...but I want you to know that while I can't understand what you went through, and I probably never will...that I'm going to try, okay?" He asks, looking as hopeful and knowing that he looks pathetic. 

Stiles quirks a frown, facing him, calculating, for a moment as he stares. He rolls his eyes.

"You're still an asshole, you know, but believe it or not, I've heard worse," he admits, and while that doesn't make Derek feel any better, it's _something_. "I'm still upset, but I'll forgive you, if you'll forgive me for making inappropriate dog jokes, because there's not a doubt in my mind that one will resent itself and, well, I've been told my brain-to-mouth filter is sub-par." He's still serious, not as open as he'd been that first day.

Derek barks out a surprised laugh, but nods anyway. "I'll take it." 

There's a potent silence, as the two meet eachother's gaze with careful consideration, the lightest of smiles as they can put this to rest.

"You can breathe now," Stiles says, confusing Derek until he hears the chorus of gasping breaths from around the hall. 

"Jesus Christ, I almost passed out, like, twice back there," Isaac says breathily.

Lydia grins sharp teeth at them, pointing to her neck. "Gills, who knew?" She drawls sarcastically, and Isaac just glares. It's enough to break the tension though, and bring them back to the present. More specifically, the hoards of people swarming into the halls like flies. Derek had forgotten.

The day goes by quickly, with Derek managing to take some pointers from Laura in how to entertain without freaking anyone out and sending them into cardiac arrest. It's mostly just popping claws and teeth, flashing eyes but only for the adults. He can't help but be grateful he gets to be with Laura, wondering how he would've survived with a cage by himself.

He glances across at Stiles, who's already looking at him. But when he realizes he's been caught, he flushes beautifully and swears under his breath, mumbling to himself and looking down. His hand reaches up to pick at the base of his antlers, self-conscious.

 

Later that day, after the Menagerie has been closed up for the night, Derek lies down next to Laura in the slowly-regenerating grass.

"I'm going to get us out of here," he whispers to no one and yet everyone at once. He's convinced no one's heard him, with Laura's faint snore off to his left and about three others somewhere in the distance.

He only thinks differently when a small root pulls itself up from the ground, thickening and branching off slowly. It forms a miniature-sized tree, Derek realizes, as the branches form small flower buds. They bloom into tiny white-pink flowers, and Derek smiles, unabashedly, at the familiar smell.

Dogwood.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully this wasn't as sad in the end!  
> I plan on updating this on my own time, so I'm not sure when the next update will be, but it will come!
> 
> Thanks for reading!


	5. Fire Starter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Features the P.O.V.'s of Kira, Stiles, and Derek.

"Our true nationality is mankind." 

                   - H.G. Wells

 

 

✽ ✾ ✿ ❀ ❁ ❃ ❋

 

 

One would think that after going through slavery, genocide, and two world wars that the world would get its shit together.

However, it's truth to say that while history is damned to repeat itself because people don't seem to learn from their mistakes.

People are afraid of what they don't understand.

 

The squeaking of markers being pulled against cardstock paper is almost as loud as the smell of the fumes is thick in the air. They work in comfortable silence, emotion spilling off of them in every form and phase.

Anger.

Upset.

Empathy.

Guilt.

Kira sighs, resilient to the toxic smell of Sharpie products since she was young, looking down at the poster held still under the pressure of her vermilion marker. The written words are bold and angry, an extension of herself, and they stand out stark against the posterboard paper.

It doesn't feel like enough.

They can raise their voices together, lift posters, and protest on the capital, but they can't do anything of substance.

They can't actually free anyone without being arrested, and those who have never make it out.

A gentle hand falls on her shoulder, Danny kneeling down beside her and taking the thick marker from her fingers. 

Glancing around the community center, her eyes catch on Ethan and Aiden, handing out stack after stack of flyers to Malia, who binds them together with rubber bands and paperclips. Kira's parents are standing side by side, blockading the rest of the room from the small television screen which commands their attention. Today is the march on Washington, and some thousand miles away protestors - not unlike herself and Danny and the rest - are being shot at close range and driven out of the streets with mustard gas. They're dying for the cause, and Kira can't think of a more sickening way to die.

In a month, the _Action Against Captivity Collective_ 's Northern California branch is organized to protest under the arc of the Argent Menagerie. The silent protests held on the inside of the Menagerie are managed by Kira and her friends, a peaceful stand against the captivity. No one makes to throw them out, afraid to get the police involved, but no one appreciates their presence either. The patrons glare at them, kick them by accident, and step on their signs, but they come back every Tuesday without fail. It's little and insignificant compared to the elaborate marches on the capital, but seeing the faces of the people behind the glass is worth it because just for a moment they look lighter.

That's all they could ask for.

The clock in the hall chimes for the hour. Standing, Kira and Danny make their way to the doors of the AACC's community center, followed by the others who have already packed up for the night. The sky outside is darkened by night, the only light provided by a half moon and what little stars can be seen from the ground. It should be a beautiful sight, but the group of teenagers stop before they can appreciate it. 

The trees are littered with soggy toilet paper, dozens upon dozens of broken egg shells and crusty yolks painting the sidewalk yellow and brown. Words of lechery spray-painted across the grass and the building's walls, artfully distasteful and cruel, but somehow lessened by the bright colors of it all.

They pretend to be surprised. 

"Kira!"

The double doors slam abruptly against the outer-sides of the defiled building, Malia shoving her way through the small throng of people. She's teary in the eyes, but not all in the usual fear and upset. She's grinning, looking slightly manic but unbelievably hopeful as she holds out her hand.

In it, a foreign burner phone.

"I found it in my coat pocket."

Kira takes the flip phone delicately, wondering minutely if this is a joke - or worse, a warning - from the general public. It only has one number programmed into it, but she only pauses a minute before dialing it.

The other end picks up, but no one speaks.

"Hello?" Kira asks hesitantly, meeting Danny's worried look with one of her own. "Who is this?"

_"A friend,"_ a female voice answers from the other side, unsure and wavering. 

_"I have a proposition for you."_

 

✽ ✾ ✿ ❀ ❁ ❃ ❋

 

 

Like all things, healing takes time.

A week passes before the trees rebirth and the grass grows green again. It’s all very lackluster still, but putting all his effort into regrowth makes for a very sluggish Stiles. Some of the patrons mention it offhandedly to the Argents, or so Allison says, but the whole ordeal goes otherwise unnoticed.

What doesn’t go unnoticed is the small dogwood tree in the werewolves’ enclosure.

The people don’t notice, but the Argents do.

“It’s, um. It’s-“

Chris Argent sighs, rubbing his eyes with his thumb and forefinger in exasperation. “Look, Stiles, I don’t care why you did it.”

“You don’t,” Stiles repeats, skeptical.

“I don’t,” Chris clarifies, “But you have to take it down.”

Glancing at Allison briefly, the nymph blanches at the words. “It’s not that simple, Chris, I can’t just will it into nonexistence.” He crosses his arms defensively, pointedly looking at his and Lydia’s adjoining wall. 

 “Stiles, It’s small right now but when it gets bigger it won’t match and the smell will be everywhere-“

“I’m telling you that I can’t do it,” Stiles says indignantly, looking across the floor into the werewolves’ room. Derek is still sleeping, because it’s really early, but also because he’s still recovering from his stint with Kate from the week before. Stiles finds himself looking over more often than not, and every time Laura catches him she gives him this knowing smirk. Meanwhile, Stiles turns a bright shade of crimson in the face just as his finches start to chatter loudly at him. Aurelia and Jules are obviously quite against the familiar metallic voices from the speakers, and puff out their brown feathers in irritation. Stiles pets them lightly on their bellies, trying to soothe them.

Chris nearly growls in frustration, stalking away in a rush of anger. “Then it’ll have to be cut down,” he yells over his shoulder, knowing Stiles can’t hear him.

Stiles sticks his tongue out childishly at the man’s retreating back, unabashed. Allison stays behind, grinning at him and smothering a laugh as her dad leaves the hall.

“You’re sending him to an early grave,” Allison says with a light smile, thumb pressed solidly to the intercom.

Stiles huffs loudly, but smiles despite. “Nothing I can do about it, I said as much.”

“I know, you’re not an earth bender.”

Stiles face pinches, “A what?”

She looks torn between explaining herself or just letting it go, but in the end decides it’ll be too hard to elaborate. “Don’t worry about it.”

“Allison-“

“So why did you grow that tree?” She prods, grinning sharply and effectively changing the subject. Stiles feels his face go bright red in response.

“I didn’t just put it there-“

“I know, you asked the tree to grow there and it did, whatever,” she waves a dismissive hand, “I want to know why. Do you have a crush on-“

“No!” Stiles barks out, too quick to be casual. “I mean, no. No, I definitely don’t have one of those.” His eyebrows pinch together and he reaches a hand to pick at the base of his antlers, self-conscious. It’s a bad habit, but one that is also a massive indicator of his feelings.

“It’s okay, Stiles,” Allison says, appeasing, but she looks troubled.

“What, you think I have bad taste or something?” Stiles snaps defensively, without any real heat. He scratches lightly at a piece of moss that has started to grow on his cheeks in place of a blush, wishing that he was a little less obvious. “Because you have no room to talk-“

“Okay, okay!” she pleads, face growing hot as Stiles gestures to his left, where Scott is snoring. The nymph grins In victory.

“If anything he has impeccable taste, he crushed on me for the first two years I was here. Though his sights are set a little high maybe-“

“Lydia, stop eavesdropping,” Stiles hisses, leaving Allison completely confused on the outside.

“Look, Stiles, this isn’t a bad thing. I just thought you hated the guy, that’s all,” Allison says with a frown, concerned.

Stiles purses his lips. “I don’t hate him,” he admits, obviously just coming to terms with the feeling as well. “It’s just, he’s the first person to actually tell me the truth, you know? Not that I don’t appreciate the fact that everyone else doesn’t just tear into me,” he says, clearly for Lydia’s sake. “But he’s honest, and he apologized, and he’s hot as fuck, I mean, just look!” Allison laughs, glancing over her shoulder at the aforementioned werewolf, still asleep next to the little dogwood tree.

“Okay, I get it,” she admits, giving her friend a light smile. 

“Besides,” Stiles mentions, “I’m just touch-starved, I’ll get over it.” He says it jokingly, but from the look on Allison’s face, she takes it differently. The girl frowns, meeting Stiles’ curious gaze before lifting a hand and pressing her palm against the glass. He returns the familiar gesture, hand splaying the span of hers and then some. Smiling nostalgically, he remembers a time when it wasn’t so, that hers was just that much bigger. It hasn’t been that way for a long time.

 

**Twelve Years Ago**

 

Stiles wakes up to the muted knock on the glass - muffled by its sheer thickness.

“Hi!” A voice yells, metallic and echoing, from the big box in the corner. The only one who ever uses the box is Mr. Argent, who is always yell-y and mad. He startles at the sound, stumbling awake and to his feet. His mom is sitting in the back corner with his dad, smiling tiredly at him as he runs to hide behind his mother’s leg.

“Hello?!” the voice says again, and when his parents don’t answer, Stiles peeks around to look at the human outside the glass.

A young girl stares back at him, bright-eyed and with a mess of brown hair falling in her eyes. She's standing on top of something, making her look bigger, but she looks like him and Aurelia, he realizes. She’s not a big human, she’s just a kid. Curiously, he steps out a bit unsteadily from behind his mom’s leg. He chances a glance across the room at Aurelia and her parents, the faeries coming to the front of their room as well. Aurelia grins curiously, her vibrant purple-blue wings fanning behind her as she hops on her small feet. He looks back to the girl in front of him.

She's smiling wildly, cheeks scrunched up in glee. He realizes he’s never seen anyone look so happy before, and he tries to imitate the expression. He stops, turning pink, when the little human girl laughs at him.

Frowning at her, his eyebrows pull together. “Przestać się śmiać **[1]** ,” he says, voice small and embarrassed. The little girl looks amazed when he talks, mouth dropping open in some sort of surprise.

His mom laughs lightly behind him, and when he looks at her, he finds her smiling too.

“Ona nie zna polskiego **[2]** ,” she clarifies patiently, giving him a nod of encouragement.

“Hi,” the little girl repeats, with less excitement and more of a breathless amaze.

Stiles purses his lips, trying to recall the few English words he’s picked up from his mother’s teaching and his father’s conversations with Mr. Argent. “Hello,” he tries, voice lilting in an accent that sounds so different from the way she’d said it earlier. He frowns in concentration, trying the sound again, but it comes out the same way.

“Hello! My name is Allison, what’s your name?” the girl asks, face pink from a small bout of laughter as his attempt at English. His face scrunches up, confused.

“Mówi, że jej nazwa jest Allison,” his mother translates, and he grins, turning back to the glass. He knows some English, but not enough to talk fluently with this girl.

“Hello, Alicja,” he says, smiling. She cackles at that, shaking her head.

“Allison!” she repeats.

“Allison…” he tries, voice awkward, but she smiles and nods.

“What’s your name?” she says, and while Stiles doesn’t understand, he guesses that she’s asking who he is.

“Władysław,” he says simply, smiling slightly when she looks at him with uninhibited awe.

“Vooahdis- Do you ‘av another name?” she asks, lips pursed as she tries to sound out his given name. His mother relays the message in Polish without asking.

“Stilinski,” Stiles says with a smile.

Allison makes a face, “Stilski?”

“Stilinski.”

“Stiles,” she says finally, a decisive nod to follow. It seems she's given up trying to sound out his name, and instead given him a new one. He frowns, but doesn’t correct her otherwise.

“Stiles,” he relents, trying out the new name and finding it to be very Americanized, but he doesn’t mind so much.

“Wha’s on your head?” She asks, pointing to her own. He looks at her head, but doesn’t see what she’s pointing at until his mother tugs his antlers gently. He startles, glaring at his mom and rubbing at the base of his antlers. They’re not very tall, he knows, and still covered in velvet, but his dad says they’ll be real big when he’s older. He picks the itchy velvet until his mom gently slaps his hands away.

Looking back to Allison, he finds another human standing behind her. Stiles startles, taking a step back and bumping into Claudia’s leg. The man just sighs, picking Allison up off her stool and keeping her a little further from the glass.

“Wha’s on Stiles’ head?” she asks the man. He looks like Mr. Argent, but littler. Not as little as Allison, but littler like his mom and dad. The man looks to his mom, giving her a hesitant nod in greeting.

“Chris,” his dad greets with a hard smile.

Chris frowns, but seems to understand Allison’s name is for him. “He has antlers on his head, like a deer,” he explains, splaying one of his hands out over his own head, and Stiles realizes he’s trying to imitate his antlers. He frowns, picking at the velvet self-consciously before his mom bats his hand away once again.

“Like a crown?!” Allison says, squirming excitedly, eyes blown wide with child-like innocence. “Is Stiles a prince?” she asks, suddenly very serious.

Chris smiles at that, looking down at Stiles. Stiles decides he likes Chris more than Mr. Argent.

“He’s sort of like a prince,” he concedes, shrugging apologetically to Claudia and John.

“I’mma be his princess then, dad,” Allison declares, smiling widely. At the words, Chris frowns, but doesn’t say anything otherwise.

“Okay, Ally, but don’t let Grandpa hear you say that.”

“Why not?” she asks, pouting and playing with a piece of her unruly hair. Chris pulls it gently out of her hands and smoothes it back. “Does Grandpa want to be the princess?” she prods, looking conflicted.

Chris lets out a bark of laughter, but nods. “He’ll be real jealous, so you’d better not tell him.”

Allison seems content with that answer, still a little conflicted, but accepts it all the same.

“Can Stiles come out to play with me and Aunt Kate?”

“Maybe another time, kiddo.”

 

**Present Day**

 

Allison stares at him sadly, enough to make his skin crawl with guilt.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

Stiles doesn’t have the courage to tell her that it’s okay, because while he believes it, he knows he shouldn’t. “Do I still have the Open Air today?” he asks instead. It’s still early enough in the morning that the Menagerie isn’t open for the day, but the clock mounted above the door isn’t helping him any, considering he can’t tell time. Allison had taught him once, back when she was learning it for the first time, but with lack of use, the concept is lost to him. Reading has had the same fate, he’s afraid, but he’s too embarrassed to ask Lydia or Scott for help. They learned from their parents before they came in, and practice diligently by reading t-shirts and signs and labels at every chance they get. They’re amazing, he decides, because he doesn’t even have the courage to try.

They’ll just pity him anyway.

“Yeah, Dad will come get you when it’s time,” Allison answers quietly. She says her goodbyes briefly, looking more sullen than when she’d arrived, and waves to Lydia in passing as she makes her way out.

“To jest w porządku **[3]** ,” he says to himself, but ever since his stint with Derek, the words feel less and less genuine.

It’s terrifying.

 

✽ ✾ ✿ ❀ ❁ ❃ ❋

 

 With a loud crash, and subsequent screeching noise, a door opens up from the back of the werewolves' enclosure. Derek still startles violently, on the verge of a heart attack, even though Laura had schooled him on the entire process.

During the third week of each month, on Sunday the cleaning crew visit and deep-clean everything and the Menagerie is officially closed all day. They supposedly open the back door - which Derek hadn't even known _existed_ \- and are in and out in under ten minutes. 

It takes all of Laura's strength to hold him back from mauling the two men that file in, dressed in bulk. They appear to be wearing an everyday janitorial uniform, but the press of something underneath on the fabric makes even the thinnest man bulky. It's easy to see they're wearing padded clothing underneath, probably in case Laura didn't have the foresight to hold him back from mauling them.

Derek is, however, surprised by their courtesy.

"Hey, Laura, how're you holding up?" One of them asks in pleasant small talk as he sets to cleaning the inside of the glass, "Sorry about the smell again, but I managed to convince them to let me buy something with more natural compounds. I just have yet to find something," the man admits, stunning Derek to the spot. Briefly, he wonders if Laura told them about their senses or they just figured so, out of common sense.

She smiles, "I've been okay, and thanks for pushing for that, I know it's kind of a hard request." Seeing her smile is almost inspirational, Derek decides, happy just at the sight of it. It's amazing how such a little thing can mean so much, especially considering the circumstances.

The two men work quickly, throwing in a passing thought here and there and conversing with each other and Laura as they move. Derek admits silently that the smell of the cleaning supplies is absolutely overwhelming, but he promises himself not to say anything for the sake of the two men - who are at least trying their best. They pause to glance at the budding dogwood tree curiously, one casting a suspicious glance across the room, but they don't otherwise comment.

"There's a pretty big crowd out there today," the taller of the two mentions offhandedly to Laura, who takes the information in stride with a small nod.

"I thought we were closed today," Derek says, cursing himself at the collective pronoun as soon as he says it.

" _We_ are," Laura confirms, "And so are the non-humanoids over in Ethos."

"The only ones working today are Stiles and Erica," the shorter of the two workers clarifies as he vacuums the far side of the enclosure. Derek stares for a moment, confused.

Laura senses this and explains, "The Argents do this thing once a month for the public, it's stupid really," she says this as if from personal experience. "But they pick one or two of us and put on something a lot like a dog show. You can watch, if you want, but we usually just take the time to catch up on sleep." She gestures haphazardly across the room. Outside, other men from the cleaning crew are putting up black curtains outside each of the glass panels, save for Stiles'. It's then that he notices the distinct lack of a hummingbird heartbeat to his left. Instead, Erica is swimming in the air across the room with Stiles. 

Realizing he's never actually seen the pixie fully, what with their being neighbors, he watches her in awe.

She's not nearly as small as he had been expecting. Bigger than the size of Stiles' finches, she buzzes around with gold-rimmed dragonfly wings - two sets that beat independently of each other. It's almost too quick to see. She has lovely blonde hair that falls in near perfect curls, and Derek can see the blatant sarcastic features in her face. 

He finds himself smiling faintly as he watches her talk animatedly with Stiles, who seems just as excited. He can imagine that they don't get to do this often. 

"How do they pick who gets to do it?" he wonders aloud, mind wandering to a thought about being in the same room as one of the others. It's surprisingly unnerving, the thought. He doesn't know half of what they're all capable of.

"Stiles does it every month, and he usually cycles around the room to let everybody have a turn," Laura says with a shrug, looking uncomfortable. "I did it once, when I first got here, but it didn't go well. I'm not allowed to anymore." Derek watches her squirm under his gaze before relenting. He wants to know what happened, if she's okay, but decides it's not his place to probe her for answers. "The Argents trust him," she adds, voice hard with something that sounds a lot like scrutiny and a little like jealousy.

Derek's eyebrows pull together in confusion, "Laura, he's been here a lot longer than you-"

"I know, okay," she says decidedly, going to sit in one of the finished corners by herself. "What's with you anyway, suddenly defending him?"

"You have a huge temper," he deadpans, swaying the conversation away from Stiles, "I'm sparing him, really." She smiles lightly before resting her head against the wall. Somewhere between their conversation the cleaning crew had finished and slipped out the door, on to the next. When they come back to put the black curtain up in front of their window, they pointedly leave just an inch of space left uncovered. Probably so that Derek can watch inconspicuously. 

He moves to sit there, watching passively as they cover Lydia and Scott for about twenty minutes before the people start filing in.

And they just keep coming.

Nearly 150 people later and Anthros Hall is teeming with buzzing and energy. The floors are lined with folding chairs, each seat taken by child or adult or reporter or professor alike. They all share a similar quality: awe.

Derek chances a glance at Stiles, who for the first time since Derek's arrival looks nervous. He isn't quite shaking, but there's a tension to his muscles as he stands there, letting Erica rest her wings in his antlers. She mingles with the finches amongst the branch-like tines, looking equally as uncomfortable. 

When a woman walks into the enclosure from the back, he understands why.

It's her.

The woman who spent hours upon hours sticking him with a cattle prod, beating him bloody, watching him heal, and beating him again. A growl rises in his throat, nearly inaudible, as she approaches Stiles and the glass panel. She does something with the headset she wears in her ear, the microphone hovering in front of her painted lips at perfect level, and suddenly the glass moves. 

Derek's muted gasp joins a hundred others as the panel shifts upward and away, leaving nothing but open air between Stiles, Erica, and the woman and the rest of the public. Several flashes of photography go off in that first moment before one of the Argent's goons silence the room in a declaration about no flash photography.

"Thank you," the woman says, voice echoing throughout the room. It occurs to Derek that he can finally here the voices of the people in the hall, what with the absence of glass. It makes his skin crawl uncomfortably, the people's scents faint in his senses. "And welcome to the Argent Menagerie! I'm Kate, for those of you haven't visited us before."

Several people clap or whoop at this, and Derek watches Stiles flinch at the sudden noise.

"Also for any newcomers, these are my good friends, Stiles and Erica. Why don't we give them some applause?" 

Clapping erupts from the crowd, and Stiles' finches flee instantly to hide among the trees. He looks lost without them, fingers twitching absently at his sides as he stands stock-straight. Kate puts what appears as a friendly hand on Stiles' shoulder, but Derek can see the tension in her fingers well enough to know that she's squeezing hard, nails pricking skin underneath his loose brown shirt. Stiles makes no attempt to shy away from the touch, but it's decidedly clear that the gesture is unwelcome. Derek growls under his breath at the thought of this being the amount of human contact that the nymph's had since his parents left. 

Erica sees the hand and flits away immediately as if on command, holing herself up in the actual tree branches instead of Stiles' antlers. 

 "As you can see, Stiles appears to be human from the neck down," Kate explains, "But there are a few indicators..." She wraps a hand around one of Stiles' antlers, tugging his head sideways by the horns, not at all gently. Stiles' neck strains awkwardly to the side, a line of tension drawn down to his collarbone as Kate gestures to his pointed ears and goes off on a less-than-interesting tangent about why his ears are pointed and not curved. Somewhere in the middle of it all, Stiles' eyes roam the room.

He catches Derek's peeking gaze from behind the curtain.

However, instead of looking away the nymph holds his gaze with a sort of careful blankness. It's only Derek that sees the distant sadness in the depths of his doe eyes.

He doesn't look away. Not even when Kate yanks him around by the antlers, pulling a measuring tape off her belt and holding it against the length between the tines furthest from each other. "Stiles' antlers have 12 points," she narrates, resting her finger on the tips of the antlers before sliding the pad of her index finger across the point. Her fingerprint comes away bloody, and the tang of the smell floods Derek's nostrils. "And don't be fooled, they're very sharp. If he were a hunted deer, they'd fetch a high price!" she says it as a joke, and the audience laughs with her, but Derek's stomach flips at the idea of Stiles' doe-like eyes turned glassy.

After quite some time of Kate showing the nymph off, she pulls a small seed from her pocket. "Mythology says that the nymph is typically associated with a certain landform or element, and their emotions can be directly linked to the health of their surroundings. They're very territorial, and if taken away from their territory, they can suffer in a similar way to an alcoholic going through withdrawal. It's very painful!" Stiles tenses, but when Kate shoves the seed into his palm, he takes it.

Holding it in an open palm, Stiles looks physically pained as the seed begins to sprout in his hand.

"Stiles here is your everyday forest nymph, and can control the nature right here in our Menagerie!"

The sprout grows upward at incredible speed until it reveals a vibrant yellow sunflower. The audience erupts in applause, standing and giving ovation. Stiles' mouth turns up at the corners, but it doesn't reach his eyes. In a flash of movement, he's escorted to the background by his antlers and Erica is brought to the front instead. Kate holds her by the wings like a moth, measuring her wingspan and explaining why she's so small. It goes much the same way as Stiles' exposition: degrading and unnecessarily rough.

The presentation ends with a bow before Erica flits away and hides in the branches of Stiles' antlers once again.

The nymph bids goodbye in silence to those who approach him, waving to the children kindly and standing absolutely still when a few older men stand too close.

"They're incredible," one of them says, in direction of Stiles' horns, and the man reaches a hand out to touch it. Stiles jerks away violently, swatting the unwelcome advance away. As soon as their hands collide, the man screams bloody murder.

"It touched me!" he yells, looking at his hand in horror. Stiles looks terrified, especially when Kate approaches.

"I-I didn't do it on purpose-" the nymph stutters at the woman.

"It talked!" A woman screams, and everyone swoops in around them within moments. It confuses Derek to no end, before he realizes that the public seems to be under the influence that they are not verbal creatures. A swell of anger rises in his stomach.

"No, no, ma'am. Some of the more intelligent creatures have learned to imitate human speech," Kate grinds out, pulling Stiles back into the enclosure. "He's no more verbal than a parrot."

A few _oohs_ erupt from the small crowd.

"Make it say something!" someone calls. 

Kate looks at Stiles with a sharp glare, before turning back to them with a gigantic grin. "Why don't you talk to him yourself?"

A few people look instantly nervous, but the man at the front says "Hello!" a bit too loudly.

Stiles stares blankly, wincing at the tight grip Kate has on his antlers, before he repeats the words robotically.

"Hello."

Twenty minutes later and Derek can hear Stiles' voice crack and go hoarse from the unceasing use. His ears are ringing from annoying humans who keep yelling words for Stiles to repeat. It goes on and on, and just when Derek's afraid it won't end, Kate makes up something about them needing rest and pushes everyone out the door all too eagerly. Kate doesn't return for several minutes, but when she does it's all big gestures and harsh words. Stiles flinches each time the woman's mouth opens, and shrinks back just a little further. In the background, Erica flutters to Stiles' side, trying to soothe the nymph with words and soft touches but it does nothing to rid him off the wide-eyed look of fear.

Derek is about to look away, feeling nauseous at the look on Stiles' face when it happens.

Kate lunges forward and grabs the nymph by the horns, pulling him violently so much so that he stumbles and falls to his knees. With the entirety of his weight in the woman's hands, an enormous amount of strain pulls at the base of his antlers, the sheer pain expressed on Stiles' face.

"Don't think you're getting away with this, _freak,"_ she hisses, forcing her hold on the antlers until Stiles' face is to the ground and the points of his antlers are making clacking sounds against the marble floors. With the balance offset, the nymph is unable to move against Kate's hold as she continues to put pressure down on them, keeping him effectively anchored to the floor. "You're not getting fed for a week," she snaps decidedly, finally letting go of him and stepping away to watch Stiles pant haggardly on his knees. 

He doesn't lift his head, probably because he doesn't have the strength to.

The room is silent to the point of a pin drop, or in this case, a blood drop.

Derek watches in horror as two symmetrical lines of red slide down Stiles' face from the base of his antlers, single droplets falling to the floor with a quiet drip.

Sometime eventually Stiles is gracelessly put behind glass once more, and the floor is cleaned of the red stain, but Derek thinks he sees similar crimson spots in his vision anyway.

 

True to her word, Kate doesn't feed Stiles for the week following.  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [1] Translation: "Stop laughing."  
> [2] Translation: "She doesn't speak Polish."  
> [3] Translation: "It's okay."
> 
> how are you all liking the different points of view? should i keep going this way (2 characters pov + Stiles and Derek) or go back to just Derek and Stiles?  
> Thanks in advance for any input!


	6. Not Actually an Update

Hi all, 

I'm just writing here, letting you know that while I am essentially dropping this fic, I have opted to do a rewrite of the concept or one similar (because antlers!Stiles and the whole captivity thing is something I was quite invested in two years ago). I will be deleting this fic from Ao3 and completely starting over. However, I will be posting the opening chapter of the renewed version on this account somewhat soon, so keep your eyes open if you're still interested!

Thank you!

**Author's Note:**

> You read, you might as well comment.  
> as always, you can message me at my [tumblr](http://sterios.tumblr.com)


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